


Seeing Red

by Measured



Category: Gouhou Drug | Legal Drug, xxxHoLic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Crossdressing, Drunkenness, F/M, M/M, Revisionist Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There once was a little helper to a woman whose house was near a copse of trees, trees which most people could not see, due to them being spirit trees. The helper was given a red cloak to protect from evil, and then a red frilly frock and cat ears, because his mistress was very cruel and loved to make him dress up in embarrassing things. She loved it almost as much as she loved wine, or at least thereabouts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stillskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillskies/gifts).



> Yakizakana: flame-grilled fish, often served with grated daikon. One  
> of the most common dishes served at home. Because of the simple  
> cuisine, fresh fish in season are highly preferable.  
> -wikipedia.
> 
> This fic does have some forced crossdressing...because Yuuko was drunk,and so was I. (Daiquris are delicious, by the way.) It didn't have the kinky aspects of forced feminization, so it didn't tag it thusly, however I wanted to note this in case it was a squick, bother, or whatever warning need be said.

There once was a little helper to a woman whose house was near a copse of trees, trees which most people could not see, due to them being spirit trees. The helper was given a red cloak to protect from evil, and then a red frilly frock and cat ears, because his mistress was very cruel and loved to make him dress up in embarrassing things. She loved it almost as much as she loved wine, or at least thereabouts.

"Beware of wolves," she said flippantly, with a grin that implied these wolves were more of the kind who groped young innocent girls in the public transport. "They'd just love to eat a tasty morsel like yourself up. Also, bring more wine before you come back! If you get eaten, I'll just make you into a ghost to do my bidding, you know!"

Watanuki was so overcome with rage, all he could do was let out a frustrated scream.

She laughed as he stomped off to get some restorative wine, as well as some restorative hangover medicine for preparation, because it never to hurt to have extras.

Especially when it came to Yuuko.

*

There was small nested groves between the pharmacy. The path forked, but Yuuko had given him some magical artifacts to keep him safe, because as she put it _new help is such a pain to train._

The forest was dense and darker than it would seem, and filled with the edge of spirits near. He saw clouds begin to press in, the echos of the whispers. The same cold, clammy feeling came over him. Once he'd sung a song to pass by the shadows, but now it all meshed together and he couldn't remember the words.

His mistress had warned him about wolves, but she said nothing about foxes. He stepped forward, and the nine-tailed fox matched his step. He tried to step around it, and it was right there.

 _Maybe it wants the wine,_ he thought to himself. He hadn't drunk any, but he was fairly certain he could get tipsy just on the wine-fumes coming off of her.

He tried to pass the creature, which he found wasn't an illusion when the fox nuzzled his leg and nommed on one of the horrible frilly bows. So much for this outfit keeping monsters away.

Yuuko was probably drunk when she thought up this one.

Correction: Yuuko was _definitely_ drunk when she thought up this one.

But it wasn't trying to eat his energy, just his ribbons. Which was actually a pretty good thing. He liked the creature already.

He leaned down and carefully, carefully petted its head. It looked up at him lovingly and tore off his horrible frilly apron.

"I have to get back to work now," Watanuki said, attempting to step away.

The fox held on tight to his ribbony mess of an outfit. He had a feeling it wouldn't cause him harm. And with any luck, the outfit would be rendered unusable by the time the fox was done with it.

"Well...come along if you want," Watanuki said.

The fox happily complied. The forest was still dark, but the spirits stayed away with the fox near him. Which was good, given that Himawari-chan was out of town, and Doumeki hadn't even left a text.

He still hadn't forgiven him for that one. He'd sent him three texts asking about what he wanted for the next menu for the week, and he'd gotten no reply. He'd waited by the phone _so he could buy the ingredients_ and only that reason, and the jerkface didn't even text him back.

He stomped further into the forest with the fox keeping in time, gnawing on his clothes all the way.

*

While the head of the Green Drugstore looked nothing like Yuuko, for he was blond where she was dark, casual where she was elegant, yet there was an unnerving similarity in their smiles.

"Is that a new official outfit?" The manager asked. "I didn't know Yuuko employed stripper ninja maids..."

Watanuki pulled at his frock and scowled. "It keeps monsters away," he said.

"Really now? It looks like it didn't quite work," Kakei said, noting the several missing ribbons, apron and large chunk the fox had eaten out of skirt.

"It's still in development!"

"It is rather striking," Kakei said. He looked over to his two workers, a pair of boys, who were now yelling at each other in a way that seemed quite familiar to Watanuki.

Kakei quickly jotted down something on a paper and then fixed his gaze on his fighting stockboys. The corners of his mouth twitched.

"Oh boys!" Kakei called.

They continued fighting.

"If you two don't come this instant, you're going to have to take the seminar on getting along again...the one in the hall closet," Kakei said in a quieter, more silky tone. He smiled brightly.

Their fighting instantly stopped. The blond, smaller boy looked horrified, while the darker, stronger boy only looked perpetually perturbed.

"We have an important client to attend to," Kakei said.

He handed the list over, and gave them a very meaningful, and frankly, _scary_ look.

"Yuuko-san only ordered one bottle," Kakei said. "How curious. This can't be right."

"That's what she said," Watanuki said. Checking the list again to see that it was only one. "It's for a basket."

"That would explain it," Kakei said. He nodded towards the boys. "Load up the usual."

"She'd send you back in ten minutes with only one bottle. Besides, consider it payment for the idea," Kakei said with an enigmatic smile.

Watanuki had a whole parcel of wine bottles when he only needed one for the basket. He puffed out he cheeks and started on the long way home.

The fox trotted along, tearing up his outfit as he went.

*

A high pitched cry of happiness greeted him when he returned home.

"Wine~ Wine~"

Larg spun around, and all Watanuki could think that it definitely was its mother's child.

Speaking of mother, he caught sight of a lump under the thick, elaborate covers. So she'd already drunken herself into a stupor. He came closer anyways. He did have a job to do, and she had already added many years on his debt for ridiculous things like 'you were late to work again being a _delinquent._

Long black hair trailed over the pillows, but Yuuko had pulled the covers all the way up to her chin. Though, she did look somewhat....different. Watanuki blinked, but the strange sight didn't change.

"Yuuko-san, what strange spectacles you have," Watanuki said.

"All the better to look at you."

The voice that came was deeper than Yuuko's, and definitely male.

"Yuuko-san....you seem to have turned into a male while I wasn't looking," Watanuki said.

"Wine does amazing things, dear boy. Now, a refill, if you please?"

He took the wine to his chest and drank it like a hungry baby would a bottle. Some of the wine spilled out from his mouth out onto the sheets, which he was dismayed to find were rather disheveled and wet? Definitely wet...and vaguely sticky looking, and there was a _smell_ in the air—

Also, this man seemed to not be wearing anything.

Yuuko stepped around in a long thin jade colored robe, her hair messily piled on top of her head. It wasn't tied very well, and looked about to burst, but that was pretty typical for his boss.

"Yuuko-san, there's a man in your bed," Watanuki said.

"It happens," she said. She turned her gaze on the man, and her expression turned sour.

"What are you doing drinking my wine?"

"We can share?" The man said.

"Not a chance," Yuuko said. She took one of the elaborate throw pillows and began hitting him with it.

Thankfully, the door rung, and Watanuki ran off to open it, welcoming the excuse from the sheer amount of awkwardness that was finding Yuuko with a man in her bed. It sort of felt like walking in on his parents....not that he had any parents to walk in on right now, but this was about the closest he got.

"You!" He screeched. "So _now_ you show up."

"I got a part time job," Doumeki said flatly.

"Yeah, well." Watanuki searched for a witty repartee. He did not find one.

Doumeki flicked a glance over him. "Nice dress."

"It's supposed to protect me from monsters, because someone wasn't there when he promised to walk me to work! _Not that I care_." Watanuki burst out with more vitriol than he intended. There had genuinely been a point. He just forgot what it had been.

"Someone sounds like a jilted lover!" Yuuko called from the back. She had even paused in hitting the man with pillows, and maybe her breasts, given the state of her robe.

"Jilted lover~! Jilted lover!" Echoed Larg.

"I am not a jilted lover!" Watanuki screamed in frustration.

Doumeki just stared at him in that usual vaguely grumpy way. "Aren't you?"

Watanuki had an unpleasant realization. Not only had he essentially just walked in on evidence that his mentor and sort-of parental figure had just had sex, he now was sounding like a heroine straight out of a shoujo manga. This was not happening.

It wasn't.

"For the last time, I am _not_ your tsundere girlfriend! In fact, I'm not your girlfriend at all, or a girl!" Watanuki knew he was babbling right now, and making less sense by the moment, but he couldn't stop.

"Also? You can make your own bento!" Watanuki yelled.

"Ahh, young love," the naked man in Yuuko's bed said. "It takes me back."

Through all this Doumeki was _infuriatingly_ nonplussed. He muttered _too loud,_ but had no other comment on Watanuki's diatribe.

And after that, the got right back to work.

"There's more than one bottle," Doumeki said. He lifted up the other bottles which Watanuki had pressed him into taking. Behind him, the fox was pulling a sleigh filled with bottles.

"What? That can't be right, I only called for one—"

" _Of course_ we'll take it," Yuuko said, with a certain gleam in her eye that always spelled trouble.

"Kakei-san said you get extra for the idea,"Doumeki said.

She licked her lips. "Special kinds?"

Doumeki looked at the labels. "Dandelion wine, strawberry wine, rice wine, some sort of magic wine..."

From down the path came another worker. The blond stockboy was there, in a delicate French maid outfit with lots of ribbons. He did not look happy about this.

"Delivery," he said flatly.

"More wine?" Watanki said.

"Kakei-san said it's compliments of the idea," the boy grumbled.

"But he already paid for the idea," Watanuki said, perplexed.

"He _really_ liked the idea," the boy said with a sigh.

"This is a happy ending," Yuuko said. "A very happy ending!"

"Isn't it about time you got spirited away by a hunter?" The man asked with a wolfish grin. "Parents need their alone time to...properly taste the wine, right, Yuuko, my dear?"

She was apparently in such a good mood that she didn't even throw anything at him, or hit him with pillows.

"You should spend time with your boyfriend, I'll allow this delinquency! In fact, I'll command it!" She said.

She tossed a pillow his way, and before it could hit him in all its fluffiness, Doumeki reached out and snatched it up from the air.

"Let's go," Doumeki said. He reached out, a rare thing for him, and eased him towards the door.

Watanuki had a million complaints, and he was about to vocalize them all when he heard a _moan_ from behind him. He was _not_ looking back there. No way.

"All right!" Watanuki said, with an air of desperation. "Take me anywhere! _Anywhere._ "

The blond delivery boy had apparently left in a huff, not even waiting for his tip. Or maybe it was a special trip, so the there was no tip. It took him a few minutes to realize that Doumeki's hand was still resting against his back.

"I'm still angry at you," Watanuki said.

"I know," Doumeki said. "You always are."

"Am not," Watanuki said. "Not at all."

Doumeki gave him a questioning look. Usually he'd be emphatically declaring the opposite, but, well.

It was complicated.

"Just forget it!" Watanuki burst out.

They walked on into the forest, and he heard the distant sound of a moan. Watanuki walked faster.

"We're going ingredient shopping. I'm making Yakizakana tonight."

"Okay," Doumeki said.

Watanuki focused on the coming meal, and not the scarring mental pictures, or the kind of weirdness between him.

Fish and daikon radishes.

He could just _hear_ Yuuko in his mind, _acting like an old married couple already?_ and the whole Greek chorus of the man in Yuuko's bed adding to the dialogue, and Larg and the twins.

Oh, hell, was he ever screwed.

(And Yuuko would probably add some commentary for that too.)


End file.
